DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) The long term objective of this project is to advance scientific understanding about the design and function of tobacco products through the acquisition, analysis and reporting of internal tobacco industry documents held in the Minnesota and other court depositories. Particular attention will be paid to the use of additives and the design of low yield cigarettes. The specific aims of this project include understanding how changes in cigarette design contribute to youth smoking and nicotine dependence. Another aim is to determine how cigarettes are designed to reduce non-smokers' perception of second hand smoke. The project also hopes to improve scientific knowledge about the toxic and addictive properties of cigarettes by reviewing tobacco industry research on smoker behavior, changes in toxic constituents in mainstream and side stream smoke and changes in nicotine delivery over time. This project is relevant to national health policy. The Food and Drug Administration has declared tobacco products to be drug delivery devices and other govemments have proposed regulating tobacco products as drugs to reduce death and diseases associated with their use. This project will provide important scientific infonnation for the better characterization of tobacco product perfonnance and such characterization is essential to tobacco product regulation. The project will electronically access documents from the Minnesota and other depositories for selected topic areas. Relevant documents will be indexed using a standard thesaurus and placed both on the internet as well as searchable CD roms and made available to policy makers and the scientific community. Documents will be analyzed and scientific reports will be written on tobacco product design, regulation and characterization.